Medical Logistics - Army Logistics University - U.S. Army

The Nature of Knowledge in the Profession
of Military Logistics
Last year I participated in a professional forum in
which educators and practitioners came together to
discuss how best to educate and develop Department
of Defense (DOD) logisticians, be they military or
civilian. The dominant theory of effectiveness seemed to
be centered on the concept of “competency mapping,”
where standardized abilities are superimposed on a hierarchy
of professional growth and competencies become
more sophisticated as one moves up the chain. On the
surface, this seems a logical proposition that would
drive DOD and civilian colleges to develop programs
that would meet the needs (expressed in measurable
competencies) of the field. Rather than critiquing the
overall idea of competency mapping (my colleagues and
I already published an extensive critique in the autumn
2004 issue of Parameters), I want to examine the idea
from a philosophical perspective.
Professor Don M. Snider of the United States
Military Academy has written extensively on how to
analyze the military as a profession. His descriptive
model of expert knowledge asserts that professions
generate abstract knowledge that is applied to new
situations and that the application of this knowledge
is ultimately judged by the profession’s clientele.
However, missing from his model has been a discussion
of the philosophical nature of that knowledge,
namely an absence of ontological and epistemological
considerations.
Ontology is the study of being or existence (explanations
of being a being) that one can interpret as the
“objective-subjective” continuum. Aspects of knowledge
of being fall somewhere on the line between that
which is concrete (witnessed “objectively” by our five
senses) and that which is conceptually created (things
that we have “subjectively” constructed in abstract
ways to make sense of the world). For example, while
a manual requisition exists objectively as a piece
of paper, it also exists through subjective meaning
because we agree in our professional community that
it is a request for delivery of supplies.
Epistemology (explanations of the origins of
knowledge) involves examining the assumptions of
generating knowledge that one construes along the
ARMY LOGISTICIAN PROFESSIONAL BULLETIN OF UNITED STATES ARMY LOGISTICS
by Dr. Christopher r. paparone
How does the Department of Defense best educate and develop its logisticians?
The author looks at how to frame military logistics knowledge holistically.
“simple-complex” continuum. For example, is knowledge
best formed by breaking aspects of military
logistics down into manageable pieces (the object of
analysis) or by taking holistic approaches to appreciate
the complexity of the entire logistics system (the object
of synthesis)?
Rather than choosing which philosophical views are
more advantageous for the professional knowledge of
military logistics, my intent is to unify these otherwise
competing philosophies—that is, to provide a macrophilosophy
of knowledge that I believe will serve the
profession well. This integrated view is formed by
crossing the ontological continuum with the epistemological
continuum. (See the chart on page 40.)
The resulting four ideal types of military logistics
knowledge help us to see educational and developmental
issues in a more holistic way. Let us now examine
each ideal type separately—temporarily suspending the
interconnectedness of the whole—before returning to
discussion of the synthetic view.
Logistics Science
The lower-left quadrant of the chart depicts military
logistics as a management science. As the scientific
method demands, conducting logistics as a management
science involves knowledge associated with
breaking logistics problems down into simpler chunks
that can be addressed with technically rational decisionmaking
processes (such as isolating and defining
the problem, developing alternatives, comparing them
to “objective” criteria, and then selecting the best alternative).
For example, the systems engineering science
associated with developing the Standard Army Retail
Supply System would create this sort of knowledge.
Knowledge based on the scientific method is
very attractive to educators and budget programmers
because curricula and programs can be rationalized
with high degrees of precision and justified using preengineered
“best” practices, even those borrowed from
private organizations. This form of knowledge should
be most familiar to institutions that train or educate for
certainty (teaching facts rather than encouraging critical
reasoning), where high reliability can be designed
39